Intec Project

07/09/2026

Three years, five countries, one open question

Since 2023, a partnership of, a municipality from Sweden, a network of local authorities universities and universities from Italy, Latvia, Belgium and Spain has been working on the same question: what would it take to give every ECEC professional in Europe a coherent, meaningful path for continuing development?

Over the past three years we built training courses, a leadership programme, and a model for structured professional observation abroad, all grounded in a shared European framework.
As the project moves toward its final phase, we're getting ready to share what we've learned with the wider ECEC community.
https://www.intec-project.eu/

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

27/08/2026

Diversity and inclusion as daily practice

Every child, every family, should feel welcomed in an ECEC centre, regardless of background, ability, language or family structure. Easy to say. Much harder to build into daily practice at scale, across a diverse continent.
What would it take to give ECEC staff across Europe a shared, practical grounding in inclusive practice, not just a values statement, but concrete tools?
👉https://www.intec-project.eu/products/training-courses/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/

26/08/2026

📖Short bursts vs. long journeys.
Not every professional needs, or wants, a multi year development plan. Sometimes a single course combined with one well designed observation experience abroad is already a meaningful step forward.
The best CPD systems don't force an all or nothing choice. They let professionals engage as much or as little as fits their role, their time, and their stage of career, while still connecting every step to a bigger picture.

👉https://www.intec-project.eu/products/inservice-training-package-for-ecec-staff/

04/08/2026

The coordinator's dilemma

You're a pedagogical coordinator. Two of your teachers need to develop stronger family engagement skills. One needs to grow into more of a leadership role. Where do you send them?
Most CPD systems don't give coordinators a clear way to match a professional's development need to the right training opportunity. It's often guesswork, or whatever course happens to have a spot open.
A structured competence framework, one that maps concrete needs to concrete activities, solves exactly this problem.

https://www.intec-project.eu/products/inservice-training-package-for-ecec-staff/

29/07/2026

What does a "European" ECEC professional identity even mean?

ECEC professionals across Europe operate in very different systems: different regulations, different funding models, different cultural expectations of what childhood should look like.
And yet, when practitioners from five countries compared notes, the overlap in values was striking: children as active participants, not passive recipients; inclusion as a daily practice, not a policy statement; families as partners, not visitors.
Building on that common ground, while respecting local differences, is at the heart of a transnational approach to CPD.
👉 https://www.intec-project.eu/products/curriculum/

28/07/2026

Sustainability isn't an add on anymore
Environmental sustainability, digital literacy, inclusion, ECEC professionals told us clearly these are no longer "extra" topics bolted onto training. They're now part of the daily work of running a centre.
The challenge is that most CPD offers still treat them as separate, optional modules rather than integrating them into how staff think about pedagogy day to day.
👉https://www.intec-project.eu/products/training-courses/social-and-green-sustainability/

22/07/2026

💪 Leadership that isn't a job title...

In early childhood education, leadership isn't only about the person with "coordinator" in their title. It's distributed: every practitioner who mentors a colleague, models good practice, or pushes the team to reflect is exercising leadership.
The challenge for municipalities and ECEC providers is how to train for this, how do you build a learning culture across a whole team, not just develop one person at the top?
👉 https://www.intec-project.eu/products/winter-school/

20/07/2026

Observation as a skill, not a soft skill

"I know how to teach, but do I know how to see what a child is really doing?"
Observation, real, structured observation of children's learning, is one of the core competences ECEC professionals across Europe say they want to strengthen. Not casual watching, but the ability to link a child's curiosity to a concrete activity, document it, and adapt practice from it.
It's also one of the hardest things to learn from a manual. You learn it by watching someone else do it well, ideally in a completely different context than your own.
👉https://www.intec-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/TITC-Pathways-and-Job-shadowing.pdf

14/07/2026

Family participation, beyond the parents' meeting.

Family engagement is consistently ranked as one of the strongest predictors of quality in early childhood settings. And yet, in most centres, it's still reduced to a termly meeting and a WhatsApp group.
Building real partnership with families, across different cultures, languages and expectations, takes more than good intentions. It takes a systematic approach embedded in daily routines, not just special occasions.
What does "family participation" actually look like when it works?
👉 https://www.intec-project.eu/products/training-courses/the-school-families-relationship-and-family-participation/

08/07/2026

The fragmentation problem
Ask any ECEC professional in Europe how they plan their professional development, and you'll often hear the same thing: it's a patchwork. A course here, a workshop there, rarely connected to what came before.
Across five EU countries, our INTEC research found no shared curriculum for in service training of ECEC staff, just a mix of local guidelines and one off opportunities. Erasmus+ accreditation is opening doors to mobility funding for more and more municipalities, but accreditation alone doesn't answer the practical question: where do you actually send your staff, and why?
This is the gap we've spent three years working on. More soon. 🧵
👉https://www.intec-project.eu/products/curriculum/